Under the Sun
by JackiLeigh
Summary: Part 15: Sam and Dean learn about June's past, and they discover that they have a 'supernatural' connection. Enjoy!


Under the Sun

Part 16—The 'Under' Series

 **AN: I have included a completely made up incident from June's childhood. This story came out of left field, it's kind of strange, content wise. I hope you can buy June in this role. I think that it works. Hope you enjoy! JL**

"We have a few days off." Dean said, stopping the car by the side of the road. He got out and stretched his legs. He yawned and stretched his body, stretching his arms high above his head.

Sam got out of the car, too. "Dean, we can always look in the newspapers…."

Dean shook his head. "We are taking a few days off."

"Demons, vampires…they don't…." Sam replied, unsure where Dean's new attitude was coming from.

"Maybe they should!" Dean stated. "Maybe the whole…monster world should take a day or two off every once in a while. Then, maybe they wouldn't be so pissed all the time!"

Sam just looked at his brother for a moment before he spoke. "What are we going to do?"

"Well," Dean replied. "…we are about 2 hours outside Manhattan. It's been awhile since we've seen, Neal. And I really want to check back with him, given what happened last time."

Sam and Dean parked their car in a parking garage in New Jersey and paid for a weeks' worth of storage. They then took a cab into the city and paid with cash, doing their best not to leave any evidence of their presence behind.

SPN/WC SPN/WC SPN/WC SPN/WC SPN/WC

June Ellington and her staff had become accustomed to their backdoor visitors. The staff was, in fact, usually the only ones who used the back entrance, running household errands so when there was a knock at the door….

Carmelita let June's visitors in, and June greeted them warmly, giving each a huge hug.

She then invited them to set down and eat with her.

"To what do I owe this pleasure, Dean." June asked as the house staff served them all lunch at the dining room table.

"We're on vacation, and we were close so…." Dean replied.

"Hunters take vacations?" June asked.

Both Dean and Sam just looked at her. They had no idea June knew what they did.

"I grew up in the south, the deep south." June smiled at their looks of surprise. "I didn't have all this until I met Byron. He introduced me to the better side of life. Anyway, I was a little girl in the south, and I grew up on an oral tradition of storytelling, all things supernatural. The stories served two purposes. They were meant to entertain. But they were also used to teach lessons, to act as warnings about how you are supposed to act and the consequences, those type things."

"I had two aunts who were into Voodoo. They were born and raised in the bayous of Louisiana. They were spinster twin sisters. They used the twin thing in their practices, and they had found that selling spells was a great way to make quick, easy money. They found they had lots of customers who could readily and easily be separated from their cash."

"They sold spells?" Sam had never heard it phrased quite that way before.

June nodded. "They had a little shop. It was really just the woodshed out behind their house. They would make up the potions there and sell them, any and everything from wart removal to love potions. They grew their own herbs and put the things together, dirt cheap. They got into darker stuff later on, as I got older." June paused, remembering. "When I was little I used to go to their house all the time. When I turned 15 I spent the night one night. I always slept in their bedrooms with one of them when I stayed. They had huge beds and we used to just sit up and talk. They were more like my sisters than my aunts. Then one night I decided to just not climb the stairs and I sleep downstairs. I had been to a cousin's house. She lived up the road. I came back late that night. There were bedrooms on the first floor. They were rarely used. I never asked why. You know, as kids you don't ask things, you just accept them. I just went in and went to bed. It was summer so I figured it would be a lot cooler downstairs. I was just looking forward to a good night's sleep."

Sam and Dean didn't ask any questions. They just listened. They knew June had a lot more to say.

"The room was cool when I walked in. I just figured it was because the windows were up. They had a lake practically in the backyard. I figured the cool air was coming in off the water. I just climbed into bed and went to sleep. I woke up to the sound of voices, several voices. They were men's voices. And there were no men in the house, like I said, my aunts were spinsters. I kind of propped myself up on my elbows and just looked. I could see shadows, dark shadows. I tried to understand what was being said. Even now, I think about it, and I don't know, for sure. I did get the impression that they didn't like the little black girl who was in the room. They weren't human. They weren't ghosts. They were dark, black as night. They felt…not exactly evil, but their intent was not good." June paused. "I told my aunts about them, later. I just, I thought they would think I was crazy. I mean, I always heard things in the house. But the house was old. And it had always been in the family, so my aunts said it was just my ancestors and that they wouldn't hurt me." June sighed. "I didn't have any problem with the ancestor part. I believed that. But I think when they moved into the darker aspects, they brought…things to the house. They did a lot of rituals in that back bedroom. I never stayed in that bedroom again. I rarely visited after that."

Sam and Dean nodded for her to continue. Their minds working overtime going over the many things June's aunts could have conjured.

"I had other cousins who stayed with those same aunts. They loved having their nieces and nephews over. And I don't mean to make them sound like mean people, they were not. I just don't think they realized how dark the things were that they were bringing in. They thought that they could control it. They had been able to in the past. But they were giving these things…power." She shook her head. "As I got older, the stuff, it scared me. But, I started rationalizing the whole thing. I told myself that the shadows were just light play and the voices were the neighbors. Sound moves funny over water."

"You stopped visiting?" Sam asked.

June shook her head. "No, but I just…I had discovered boys, and I was…I had a lot more freedom. My parents were letting me go out with my friends more." She sighed. "I was 25 when one of the sisters died. Lilly died first. Lucy died about 10 years later. Lucy rattled around in that old house, alone. Except I really don't think she was alone. I think all those…things…all those spirits took up residence after Lilly died. They saw Lucy was an old woman and with the twin thing broken, they just moved in."

"I had to sleep that back bedroom the night before Lilly's funeral. I had pretty much forgotten what had happened when I was 16. It seemed like a lifetime ago, and I was so far removed. I had changed. The world had changed. Science was all the rage, NASA, Space Lab, the first man on the moon. It was foolish to believe in such things as ghosts, spirits."

They had all finished eating by this time. They got up and moved into the living room.

"I went right to sleep. But I woke up to the voices." June shook her head. "Then I remembered. It was like a bad dream. The men's voices, the same voices I had heard years before." She asked Carlotta to get Sam and Dean a couple of beers before she continued. "I never told my aunts everything when I was a kid. As scared as I was, I never told all of it. I think I figured that they kind of knew already. I mean, how could they not? They weren't scared. That made it seem silly." She sighed. "After Lucy died the house went to us, the nieces and nephews. We auctioned off the furniture. They had some great old pieces. We cleaned up the house. We made the needed repairs. It was going on the market, by that time we had all moved away. We had our own lives. And we all had had…experiences in the house. We thought that if the house moved out of the family's hands that things would be okay for whoever lived there next, so we never told the people who bought it about the place. We had left one bedroom untouched, pretty much, the one that I had told you about. I wouldn't clean it, I wouldn't go in. I just refused."

"What do you think it was?" Dean asked.

"I was told shadow people." June replied. "I'm not sure what they are, except I've been told that they were never human."

"I'm not sure how your story ties into hunting." Sam stated.

"I heard about hunters growing up." June explained. "Since my aunts were considered witches, they feared that hunters would show up. They said that they could look like anybody." June took a sip of her wine. "They feared the hunters would make them stop practicing, or maybe even kill them. We are talking about a time in America of segregation. It just wouldn't have made the papers, two African American women practicing Voodoo in Louisiana." June shook her head. "Aunt Lucy always used to tell me not to tell people what she and Lilly did for a living. She said she and Lilly had to be careful. I was never sure what it meant as a kid. And we had hunters all over the place, in my family even. They hunted deer, quail; we always had a wild turkey for Thanksgiving."

"…not the hunters that they were talking about." Dean replied.

June shook her head. "…not at all."

"But…one like you guys showed up at my parents' house when I was about 7 years old. They asked for Lucy and Lily by name. The man had no idea we were related. Lucy and Lily were my mother's sisters, so our last names weren't the same. My dad…he told us kids and my mom to stay inside while he talked to the man. He sent the men off in the opposite direction. He said one of the sisters had passed and the other had moved away, left the area." June turned and looked at Dean. "I don't think the man believed dad. But we never saw the man again, well, not alive anyway. An unidentified white male was pulled out of the lake behind my aunts' house about 6 months later. The papers ran a likeness for months. But I guess…nobody wanted to say anything and implicate themselves in a murder." June said. "The man was shot in the back, twice."

"You never heard or saw anything?" Sam asked.

"…about that, nothing officially." June waved her hand. "I'll get back to that. But I heard and saw a lot, about a lot of things. You gotta remember, Boys…this was back in the '60s. There may have been flower power and peace and love and all that, other places. But in the Deep South with white cops…." June explained. "…it was a thin line you just didn't' cross. But even the cops didn't want to put two spinster black women in jail. It was ruled a hunting accident and the case was closed."

Sam and Dean just looked at one another.

"You asked if I had heard anything, I didn't. But it was widely accepted, in the family, that the man died by one of my aunts' hands." June paused. "We all assumed that they took the man as a threat, and took care of the problem. After all, the sisters did know how to shoot. They owned guns. They had even gone wild game hunting, on occasion."

"Did you…get any of it?" Dean asked.

June smiled and nodded. "Just a little…I guess. Not that I ever really used it. I know my great granny was known throughout the bayou. I just…I didn't want to have to live in the backwoods all my life in a shack. I didn't want to end up just putting little things in jars and bags, and I didn't want to have to be afraid of my customers."

"So, you have used it?" Sam asked.

June nodded. She shrugged. "Hex bags…I made a rabbit's foot unlucky once. Gave it to a man who cheated Byron in card game, worked like a charm. He had a very rough couple of weeks. I made a couple of bags for protection. I keep those around the house all the time."

"So, you do believe in the stuff." Dean stated, for clarification.

"I never said I didn't." June replied. "I've seen too many of the…results to say that. It's just not something you can just…dabble in. It's not something that you can just…play with and walk away. There is a give and a take with this stuff. If you take, you have to give back."

"What do you mean?" Sam asked.

"You have to take your time. Understand what you're doing and understand the repercussions." June explained. "You have to accept that there will be consequences for you, not matter how your spell, potion, whatever works out. Good things do have consequences. We are responsible for what we put out there. So we need to make sure that we get everything right when we send it out so we don't have any weird, strange, unintended circumstances."

"We had no idea." Dean admitted.

June nodded. "It's about balance, kind of a yen and yang thing, if you will. You give out bad over here, a curse, a hex bag. You need to put out good over there to balance it out. That's the case when you put out bad things. Which witches are most known for, I mean with the famous ugly face and the wart on the nose. But we have been known to do good things too."

"You have anything up in Neal's apartment?" Sam asked, curious.

June nodded. "Right after the first time I met you. He started wearing a St. Michael's medal. I knew something was going on. I put protection bags in every room."

Sam and Dean looked at June, very surprised.

June shook her head. "I've seen too much in my lifetime to discount anything. And then I meet you two, and it's confirmed. It's real."

"We have yet to find a sober or real Santa Claus." Dean offered.

Sam looked at his brother. "…or a dragon."

Dean looked at Sam. "Yeah, right, no dragons. But everything else…."

"We're on the fence about fairies." Sam admitted.

June didn't know what to think.

"I kinda trapped one in a microwave one time. I just sorta…I nuked her." Dean went on to explained. "It was a tiny naked lady in a ball of light. She kind of just flew around the room in her little light-ball thing."

June looked at the boys. She then called Carlotta into the room and asked her to bring her some more wine and the Winchesters a couple more beers. She had a feeling that that there would be a lot more interesting conversation to come before Neal got home for work.

THE END

More Sam, Dean, and Neal Adventures to Come!


End file.
